Backroom Boys

East End saga queen Jean Fullerton returns with a delightful new novel in the Nurse Connie seriesIt's 1948 and the nurses of the East End of London are making the most of life post-war. For Connie in particular, things are looking rosy as she looks forward to planning a future with her sweetheart, Malcolm. But, as many a young bride-to-be has proved, the course of true love never did run smooth and Connie finds herself having to grapple with interfering mothers and Malcolm's reluctance to set the date. But while there are many obstacles to overcome before walking down the aisle, at least Connie can relax in the knowledge that she'll soon be married to the man of her dreams, can't she? Life at work isn't all smooth sailing either. The newly-formed NHS is keeping the nurses of Fry House extremely busy and as ever in the life of a nurse heartbreak lurks at every turn. But there are some new faces to keep things interesting. And one in particular might be the answer to all of Connie's problems...

One of the greatest escape stories of World War Two.When the Germans invaded Crete in 1941, Sandy Thomas was shipped to the Greek mainland as one of their prisoners. Despite being severely wounded in the leg he attempted several escapes, including being carried out of his POW camp in a coffin. He finally succeeded in a spectacular escape, and made his way across Greece to Mount Athos, a rocky peninsula populated solely by monks. Here he evaded capture for over a year, before finally stealing a boat and navigating his way through winter seas to freedom in Turkey. This, his story, is one of the great escape narratives of the Second World War.

Joan Lock's warm and nostalgic account of her three years of training as a young student nurse in the early 1950s. Perfect for fans of CALL THE MIDWIFE.When Joan Lock began her formal training as a young nurse in the 1950s, she was unprepared for the strict discipline and long hours which were to follow and quickly realised she was no Florence Nightingale. Her honest and humorous account of the next three years reveals her most intimate experiences of being a nurse: from dealing with temperamental surgeons to fighting off flirtatious patients. Labelled a trouble-maker, Joan and her friends tested their strict Sisters' patience as they climbed through windows, slept through lectures and broke every thermometer that passed through their hands. But through it all, Joan found herself touched by the people she met and their heart-warming stories.

The memoir of a Great Ormond Street nurse.This is the inspirational story of life as a nurse during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, most of which was spent at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. Susan Macqueen was 12 years old when she accompanied her mum to see her friend Ms Fairweather, the matron at the local nursing home and from that day on she knew she wanted to be a nurse. A few years later, despite being told that her grades weren't good enough and having left school with only two O-Levels, Susan was accepted on the three-year nurses training course at Addenbooke's hospital in Cambridge. It wasn't long before Susan knew she wanted to work with children and set her sights on a job at Great Ormond Street. Thirty-five years later, on her third attempt, Susan has finally retired from that iconic hospital and is enjoying a more leisurely pace of life.Hope, despair, laughter and tears, Susan's stories move the reader through the incredible stories that she was faced with on an every day basis.

The story of the greatest illusionist of modern times and the man who conjured victory in the desert - to be made into a film starring Tom CruiseJasper Maskelyne was a world famous magician and illusionist in the 1930s. When war broke out, he volunteered his services to the British Army and was sent to Egypt where the desert war had just begun. He used his skills to save the vital port of Alexandria from German bombers and to 'hide' the Suez Canal from them. He invented all sorts of camouflage methods to make trucks look like tanks and vice versa. On Malta he developed 'the world's first portable holes': fake bomb craters used to fool the Germans into thinking they had hit their targets. His war culminated in the brilliant deception plan that won the Battle of El Alamein: the creation of an entire dummy army in the middle of the desert.

The complete story of how the German Enigma codes were broken. Perfect for fans of THE IMITATION GAME, the new film on Alan Turing's Enigma code, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.Breaking the German Enigma codes was not only about brilliant mathematicians and professors at Bletchley Park. There is another aspect of the story which it is only now possible to tell. It takes in the exploits of spies, naval officers and ordinary British seamen who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives snatching the vital Enigma codebooks from under the noses of Nazi officials and from sinking German ships and submarines. This book tells the whole Enigma story: its original invention and use by German forces and how it was the Poles who first cracked - and passed on to the British - the key to the German airforce Enigma. The more complicated German Navy Enigma appeared to them to be unbreakable.

A compelling account of the Red Army's epic struggle to drive the Germans out of Russia and back to Berlin.Beginning with the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, THE ROAD TO BERLIN is the story of how the Red Army drove the Germans from its territory, and finally invaded the Reich. Using an enormous range of primary sources - Soviet, German and Eastern European - John Erickson describes fighting and hardship on a scale almost unimaginable in the West. He provides a detailed narrative of all the battles on all the fronts, and also of the Soviet system of war which achieved, under maximum stress, near impossible feats in the field and in the factories. The book also tells of the diplomatic moves and counter-moves, including the all-important conferences at Tehran and Yalta. Comprehensive, compelling, and immensely readable, it is an indispensable book for any student of the Second World War.